Day 25 – TBWAB – it didn’t disappoint

The overnight forecast was for early morning rain with thunder, clearing up by lunchtime. As it happens all we got was a light shower around breakfast, then the skies began to clear and the temperature rose to nearly 80 deg. F. All this meant that the predicted ‘fall’ of migrants didn’t really materialise. Still there was a change of cast on the boardwalk and we did get some new species and excellent views of the stuff we’d seen previously. Our final session at Magee Marsh in the late afternoon will live long in the memory – it was reasonably quiet, with a lot of the Sunday visitors gone home, the weather was glorious, the light was fantastic and the birds couldn’t have been more cooperative. A fitting end to our TBWAB experience.

*Contender for ‘bird of the day’ was this Rusty Blackbird – a bit of a Grackle look-alike but with subtle differences*

*Not so subtle were these warblers – bold and brassy in their fresh breeding plumage – this is Bay-breasted*

*On the Ottawa wildlife drive after lunch we had a couple of additions, including Swamp Sparrow*

*and Horned Grebe – or Slavonian as we know it – which wasn’t on our radar*

Today we leave our The Biggest Week in American Birding base, close to Black Swamp Bird Observatory / Magee Marsh, and head north into Canada on the final leg of our GABRaT ll adventure. Some great memories and unbelievably good birding.